COLUMN: An Issue or Two

By Tobin Barnes
Some issues have arisen since the last time I wrote. Not sure I’ll be able to handle them all in one writing, but let’s not waste time.

First, I recently had to call off the dogs hot on the trail of the Wall Street fat cats. A few weeks ago--perhaps you remember/perhaps not, it doesn’t matter--I proposed a new tax. I called it the “I-screwed-up-the-nation tax.”

Evidently, Congress was listening--I’m always amazed at the power of small-town journalism--and the House of Representatives strangely took my tongue-in-cheek proposal to heart and passed a 90% tax on AIG retention bonuses.

Well, heck, slow down there Hoss. I was just kidding! I always knew that such a retroactive taxation would probably be unconstitutional. Shucks, I mean, come on!

No doubt something needs to be done to rein in the unbridled greed, but let’s think about this rationally, okay? Anyway, I said as much in a recent tweet on twitter--my subscribers are ready to pounce on my every thought--and now Congress has seemed to back off on that rash taxation plan.

(From now on, I’ve got to be very careful about what I publish in newspapers and on the Internet. Important people seem to be listening.)

Yes, cooler heads have prevailed, and many of the AIGers are now supposedly returning their retention bonuses.

And isn’t that special?

What a nice bunch of guys, huh? And they’ve come to that solution with hardly any coaxing--other than a national uproar akin to Transylvanian villagers storming Dr. Frankenstein’s castle in a torch-lit mob.

Yeah, “retention” and “bonus” have become dirty words, if not laughable words, in our current state--laughable in the sense that it’s soooo essential to keep this kind of irreplaceable “talent.”

That’s right. Another company might hire away these Masters of the Universe to help drive it into the ground, too.

Not to worry. I’ve always thought there’s plenty of that kind of talent to go around without getting into a bidding war.

Uh huh, the words “retention” and “bonus” are going off on a nice little vacation and won’t be heard in our everyday parlance for quite some time now, except maybe as a part of a snarky joke. But don’t worry, other words and schemes having the same effect will soon replace them.

Which brings me to another issue. Why haven’t I ever been offered a retention bonus?
I would have liked to have gotten a retention bonus or two before they became dirty or laughable words. I’ve been in the teaching business for thirty-three years now, and I would have appreciated it, by golly.

Granted, you need to be considered irreplaceable to even think of getting a retention bonus. But as far as I’m concerned, on a personal level, I’m pretty darned irreplaceable. After all, if I’m replaced, I’m no longer there, and that’s serious stuff for me.

Sure, another teacher could easily move into my classroom and do similar things, probably even better, but my unique brand of me won’t be there any more. I think my me-ness is important, at least to me.

So, yes, I’m irreplaceable and also worthy of ridiculously outlandish rewards, maybe penthousian in nature.

Admittedly, I’ve never been in a position to screw up the nation, but if that’s where you have to be to get a retention bonus, Wall Street should have given me shot. I could have screwed things up just as well as the big bucksters currently hiding out from those Transylvanian-like mobs.

Oh! And finally, one other issue:

What kind of advanced degree do you need to understand what’s going on with “Lost”?